[Ohrrpgce] Problem starting gfx_directx

[Jay Tennant]

There could be an additional dll that mediates between the program and gfx_directx.dll. I think it's just easier to use the static linking. The best solution would be to remove the d3dx dependency altogether by building an alternative to ID3DXFont and D3DXSaveSurfaceToFile().

> From: "Mike Caron" <caron.mike at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 6:56 AM
> 
> http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/02/14/372266.aspx
> 
> That was a pain in the butt to find :/
> 
> Anyway, read the comments too.
> 
> --
> Mike Caron
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Mike Caron" <caron.mike at gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:38:50 
> To: <ohrrpgce at lists.motherhamster.org>
> Subject: Re: [Ohrrpgce] Problem starting gfx_directx
> 
> Shit, you replied after I left, and thus I can't link pertinent docs.
> 
> Anyway, if DyLibLoad etc aren't working the way I mention, it's because FB is mangling it's wrapper around LoadLibrary or whatever the Win32 function is called.
> 
> And, the flag you're talking about is deprecated, and when used is a ticking time bomb. Specifically it will blow up when you try to resolve any symbols in those dependencies!
> 
> Google "old new thing DLL DEPENDENCIES" or something like that (no quotes), to find the relevant page on The Old New Thing.
> 
> --
> Mike Caron
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:30:38 
> To: <ohrrpgce at lists.motherhamster.org>
> Subject: Re: [Ohrrpgce] Problem starting gfx_directx
> 
> 2009/12/24 Mike Caron <caron.mike at gmail.com>:
> > Ralph Versteegen wrote:
> >>
> >> 2009/12/23 Jay Tennant <hierandel8 at crazyleafgames.com>:
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
> >>>> Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 10:35 PM
> >>>> 2009/12/23 James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I was just testing out a windows build with gfx_directx gfx_sdl on a
> >>>>> computer with directx 9.0c installed (according to dxdiag). When I run
> >>>>> game.exe it says:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "This application has failed to start because d3dx9_41.dll was not
> >>>>> found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."
> >>>>>
> >>>>> When I click okay on it, then game.exe starts up okay falling back on
> >>>>> gfx_sdl
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Any idea why this might happen?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ---
> >>>>> James Paige
> >>>
> >>> d3dx9_41.dll is one of many dll's that microsoft has released to patch
> >>> the d3dx library. A solution to this would be obtaining the latest dx
> >>> runtime on your computer, available at:
> >>>
> >>> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en
> >>>
> >>> An alternative would be compiling the backend with static linking the
> >>> d3dx library, which was available in the december 2004 dx sdk. This will
> >>> remove dependencies, but will increase the dll size by about 500kb.
> >>>
> >>>> That's interesting, I was under the impression that loading
> >>>> gfx_directx.dll would silently fail if its dependencies weren't
> >>>> available. Luckily, it's quite simple to check in backends.bas whether
> >>>> d3dx9_41.dll (the august 2009, I think, release of the Direct3D 9
> >>>> utility library) is present before attempting to load gfx_direct.dll,
> >>>> and I was originally planning to do.
> >>>
> >>> It's present in March 2009. I was trying to manually remove all
> >>> dependencies, but got stuck with the screenshot and font algorithms.
> >>>
> >>> I'll upload a version of gfx_directx that has no dependencies in a few
> >>> minutes, though 500kb larger.
> >>
> >> We ought to have some way to detect whether or not the dll has been
> >> statically linked to d3dx9 or not. Would it be possible to set the
> >> version number (the one seen in a the file browser) and read it
> >> somehow?
> >
> > I haven't looked at this backend at all, so I don't know if this is already
> > done, but the standard way of doing this (on Windows, at least) is something
> > like this:
> >
> > hModule = DyLibLoad("gfx_directx.dll")
> > hFunction = DyLibSymbol(hModule,
> > "some_function_that_exists_in_d3dx9_41_dll")
> >
> > if hFunction != 0 then
> >  'd3dx9_41.dll is statically linked
> > end if
> >
> > DyLibFree(hModule)
> >
> > --
> > Mike
> 
> Well that won't work, because surprisingly windows pops up a message
> box when the dependency is missing
> 
> However, I saw a winapi function to load a dll without resolving its
> dependencies (for the purposes of loading resources), probably that
> can be used in the way you described.